Molesworth Hender Delves, Brookes P. Cannon. European Sculpture from Romanesque to Neoclassic

F. A. Praeger, 1965. — 296 p. — (Praeger world of art series).In this beautiful and informative volume,
H. D. Molesworth maintains — and amply
demonstrates—that sculpture
reveals the underlying ideas of
life and art in a synthesis that would
be impossible except in the visual
arts. His survey of European sculpture,
therefore, while it charts the major
trends of sculpture in all the West
European countries from the midtwelfth
to the nineteenth century, does
not attempt to justify the traditional
divisions of style and period in any
but visual terms, letting the sculpture
and sculptors speak for themselves.
The author, a distinguished authority
on European art and an associate of
the Victoria and Albert Museum, seeks
mainly, in his lucid and detailed text,
to offer an account of the vast complexity
of circumstances—the economic
and political backgrounds, the
contributions of patrons and artists
that affected the evolution of sculpture.
From the earliest Romanesque carvings
to the great monuments of
Gothic sculpture, from Donatello and
Michelangelo to the contrasting extremes
of Rococo and Neoclassic art,
he traces the principal developments
and changes that give to the history
of sculpture its extraordinary richness
and variety.